Want To Get Our Economy Rolling Again? Stop Importing Workers/Exporting Jobs!
By Ann Huggett (05/19/03)
Okay, kiddies, everyone who knows what schadenfreude is, please raise your hand. For those of you in the back of the class who haven’t a clue, it’s German for “A malicious satisfaction in the misfortunes of others.” I personally think it’s German for “Shaft your friend” because schadenfreude depends primarily on your success being all that much sweeter thanks to the failure of others. It’s “I’m okay, Jack, too bad about you!” said with a cold hearted sneer of enjoyment.
Unfortunately, I bumped up against a practitioner of schadenfreude the other day. To say that the paint blistered off the walls and blood flowed in the streets after I was finished with him would be an understatement. A businessman I know, who has a cash register where his heart should be, was smirking over his reverse discrimination practice of hiring ONLY cheaper immigrant Asian IT workers. Not only did he crow about his profits but he had the nerve to claim that American IT professionals were actually inferior to their Asian counterparts!
Speaking as an out-of-work IT professional, whose husband and brother are out-of-work IT professionals, and who has many, many friends who are out-of-work IT professionals, I let him have it verbally right between the eyes.
Add up all the tens of thousands of laid-off workers in this country then multiply this man’s hiring practices by the thousands of other businesses which do the same and you can see why the IT industry is not only damaged but failing. It won’t matter how many tax cuts President Bush manages to squeeze through Congress if the people, who used to hold the jobs, pay their mortgages, pay their taxes, and purchase goods and services can’t do anything but collect unemployment.
Standard economic theory holds that for every dollar earned, six more dollars of wealth are generated from the circulation of that earned dollar. When you have foreign workers earning money in place of native workers, those earned dollars end up being sent back to that immigrant’s country of origin usually to support an extended family. That means a net transfer of wealth out of the US. To add insult to injury, many large corporations are even outsourcing jobs directly to foreign countries now rather than bother hiring in anyone immigrant or otherwise.
What also gets my dander up is when these immigrant workers openly brag about their so-called superiority. When they do that I quiz them about basic programming skills like C++ and usually get a blank stare. Most job agencies dread handling them because they out and out lie on their resumes. Just try to check up on work histories from the Indian subcontinent! Whatever qualifications they claim to have, immigrant workers put us out of work.
If these immigrant workers are so bloody brilliant, why didn't they invent the various industries they’ve taken over to begin with? Right now there are Indian companies losing their IT contracts because of non-compliance. They can't piggyback their work off American and British programmers like they can when they come over here and push us out of jobs! Imported workers or outsourced jobs are also the reason why help desks are disasters and customer problems arise. Banks and financial institutions, which are busily outsourcing accounting departments overseas, are sending over our credit information to countries with histories of credit card theft and fraud!
Our countries do not exist in order to provide jobs for the rest of the world while keeping our own people out of work. It stinks and unethical business practices are the reason why these substandard and lower paid workers are imported or jobs outsourced.
It’s not the IT industry alone that is suffering either. In California, Asian employers, who don’t even bother to hide their discriminatory hiring practices, are bringing in prostitutes and janitors from India under H1-B and L-1 visas. What? There aren't enough native hookers and sanitation engineers to keep up with the demand? Construction crews in the Southwest are almost all Mexican now. In the UK the National Health Service would rather import HIV positive nurses from Africa than pay wages which would attract British workers. Enoch Powell sounded the alarm as early as the 1960s with his “Rivers of Blood” speech. He foresaw the ultimate racial unrest caused by British transport importing lower paid Jamaicans into the UK as substitutes for British workers.
It's about time businesses gave up their love affair with immigrant workers and put the welfare of their own people ahead of a quick and cheap solution. Yet what do they do? You got it! They continue to flood the country with even less qualified and cheaper labor claiming, like the businessman who set off this rant, that homegrown workers don’t have the necessary skills! Considering that the trend in Human Resource departments now is to ruthlessly weed out older workers with years of experience, that “shortage” is artificially induced. I met a friend for lunch one day at Cisco Systems HQ in San Jose. While I waited 20 minutes for him in the lobby of his building, I did not see one non-Asian walk out of the place. Currently only 5% of graduates in the Computer Sciences at American colleges are finding jobs right out of school.
It has been pointed out that intrusive government regulations have made things impossible for average businesses to thrive. That's because the system right now is fascistic thanks to all those laws, which may give the illusion of private ownership, but make it expensive and difficult to hire American workers. The big corporations thrive under fascism and want ever more restrictive employment and business rules because it KILLS COMPETITION. The last thing corporations want to do is compete for workers. So they cry, "There aren't enough skilled workers" so they can flood the workforce with immigrants who are willing to undercut native workers and forego benefits. Also, any H1-B is required under the terms of his visa to work for a period of 6 years for the company that brought him in. That means no job hopping for better positions once here. In effect, the H1-B is an indentured servant of the corporation.
Right now 55% of all British 50 years and older are out of work and it’s nearly impossible to find an American IT worker over 50 still in the work force. These are the men and women who made businesses thrive AND WORK to begin with. They suddenly "don't have enough experience" or "don't have the right credentials" or "aren't as good as immigrants". This is all code for "they're too expensive."
The reason why I reamed that businessman a new navel at the beginning of this essay was that he was casting aspersions on ALL native IT workers in favor of immigrant workers. That's reverse discrimination and every bit as wrong as any racist notion.
That businessman is just plain cheap and looking out for Number One. He's not a capitalist in favor of market forces. In a proper market, demand and supply balance each other out. What this guy is in favor of is a MANIPULATED market where OVER-supply of workers will drive down wages. That's not capitalism; that's cheating. And cheating is not part of what makes a healthy economy! Real businesses hold themselves to high standards such as honesty and decency. They treat their employees fairly AND THEY PAY A FAIR WAGE.
Capitalists don't act like selfish babies frantic at the idea that someone somewhere might make an extra dollar or two. The politics of greed and envy is the specialty of the socialist, not the capitalist. The capitalist does not begrudge his employees their wages; he works from enlightened self-interest knowing that you have to spend money to make money.
When our manufacturing base was pushed off-shore to nations with little or no environmental regulations and cheaper labor, Americans were told to retrain themselves for High Tech. Now the same thing is happening to the high-end service industries. Jobs are going overseas or given to lower paid foreign workers. The economy is tanking and deflation is staring us in the face.
I have news for the movers and shakers in DC: it’s awfully hard to buy washing machines, cars, shoes, TVs and the like when the only job left to you is asking people if they want fries with their order. If you want the economy to get moving again, seal the borders, kill the H1-B and L-1 visa programs and get rid of business stifling laws. America is the economic engine that runs the world so get Americans working!
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